


Where We Belong

by isayhello



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Established Relationship, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Mutual Pining, Post-Timeskip | War Phase (Fire Emblem: Three Houses), kind of, like they def had something going on during the academy phase, no beta we die like Glenn, soft, they are so soft
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-28
Updated: 2020-12-28
Packaged: 2021-03-10 21:22:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,544
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28373838
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/isayhello/pseuds/isayhello
Summary: It's been one week since the battle of Myrddin Bridge and Dedue has been avoiding someone. On a sleepless night, she comes to find him.
Relationships: Mercedes von Martritz/Dedue Molinaro
Comments: 2
Kudos: 33





	Where We Belong

**Author's Note:**

> Hey all! I just cooked this up really quick. I love Dedue and Mercedes so much, I hope I did them some justice.

Dedue woke with a start, heart racing as his eyes flew open. He felt icky, like a thick sludge was weighing him down, trying to trap him in his bed. He swung his feet over the side, shivering despite relative warmth of the fire crackling in his hearth. A fire which he did not light. He wondered absently who had come into his room to light the fire for him, but he had a suspicion — a certain blonde woman he’d found himself unable to face since his return a week prior.

Everything was so similar in the monastery to how it was back then, yet simultaneously so completely different. So devastatingly different. For one, his liege… Dimitri seemed so far away. They used to commiserate about their nightmares, but now Dimitri hardly slept enough to dream. Everyone felt so far away. Dedue decided to take a walk. Maybe he would run into Dimitri. Maybe they would talk, like old times. He smiled grimly, knowing that last bit was just wishful thinking.

The stars were shining bright on a crisp Great Tree Moon evening. Dedue’s heart was still racing from his nightmare. His nightmares used to just be about Duscur, but now he had new trauma mixed in: exactly three weeks had passed between Dimitri’s escape from Fhirdiad and his own. Those three weeks were indescribably bleak, he was starved, burned, cut, tortured in any and every way. Such ministrations had since come to haunt him in his sleep.

Before Dedue could even notice where his feet were carrying him, he was standing in the greenhouse, just in front of a small row of white Duscur flowers that were all his. His very own row of flowers, preserved for these last five years—by whom, he had no idea, though he felt an immense debt. He could feel tears prickling the backs of his eyes as he reached out to gently caress the petals, but quickly blinked the wetness away.

“Good evening, Dedue,” His hand dropped as he heard the voice like bells, the voice like sunshine and happiness and everything he’d ever wanted. Mercedes was standing in the doorway to the greenhouse, looking simply heavenly in a robe pulled over a nightgown. He couldn’t meet her eyes. “Having a hard time sleeping?”

“Mercedes,” he greeted her, her name hanging in the air. They hadn’t been alone, hadn’t had a chance to talk, since he’d reunited with his class. This was partially by design—he couldn’t bear to see her face, her worried eyes looking him over. It was too intimate, everything between himself and Mercedes had always been too intimate. It made him want to melt into her and shy away from her at the same time. He didn’t know what he could possibly say. She was a woman who deserved the best, and he was far from it.

He wasn’t sure what to do, so he continued to look down at his flowers. He thought for a moment that she had left him there, and it made him feel very small despite his stature. But a moment later, he heard her exhale, much closer than before. “Dedue,” She said, something in her voice that he’d never heard before, “please look at me.” And so he did. Her eyes, such a soft shade of periwinkle, shone as she gazed at him pleadingly. Something that looked agonizingly similar to tears were swimming back there. “I’m so happy,” she said quietly, her voice ringing in his ears in the quiet greenhouse, “that you’re here again…with me,” she reached out at tentatively touched his shoulders, hands tracing their way down his arms.

“I’m sure,” he responded, his voice thick, “that your quality of life would not be greatly altered were I not,” Dedue never did this, never reached out for reassurance. Such was the reason why he had been avoiding Mercedes, because he needed something from her that he didn’t need from anyone else, and it scared him.

“Dedue…” she responded, still stroking his upper arms. Her touch was so light, like feathers. “Do you not understand?” And now she was crying. He had made her cry. “I…you…we—” she swallowed. “I prayed. Every day. To everyone. Not just the Fodlan goddess, but all of the deities of Duscur and all of the gods and goddesses that I’ve never even heard of or imagined before—” her shoulders shook with the force of a sob. Dedue was mortified, his eyes wide, unsure of how he could possibly amend the situation. “I just wanted to see you again,” she squeezed her eyes shut, dropping her hands. 

Dedue could feel his heart swelling as he regarded the blonde woman before him. Without thinking, he snatched one of her hands out of the air as she pulled away from him. Her fingers were so soft and delicate and slender. He turned her hand over in his, tracing it lightly. “I…prayed to see you again as well,” he admitted shyly, eyes fixed on their hands. 

“Why have you been avoiding me?” She asked, hurt in her voice. Of course she would be hurt. Dedue thought back to their time at the academy, to their quiet evenings spent together in various corners of the monastery—in the kitchens, the cathedral, the greenhouse—there was nowhere in the monastery that Dedue hadn’t cuddled up with Mercedes at least once. Things were so different back then. He was a different person, a softer person. He’d felt that maybe he could be happy one day—happy with Mercedes. A life he’d never dared to imagine for himself before.

She had understood him in a way no one else ever had. She shared his desire to help others, to improve the world, to shine a light of goodness upon everything he touched. He hadn’t truly believed in goddesses until he saw Mercedes at work. In everything she did, she was heavenly. He’d watched her sew, pray, cook, read, tend flowers—all of it was beautiful.

Dedue was brought out of his trance by soft fingers tracing his jawline. Mercedes had lifted her opposite hand to stroke his face, and he could not stop himself from leaning into her touch. “You deserve better than me,” he finally answered her question, still looking at her hand that was clasped in his own. He could feel her tracing one of his scars, as if for emphasis, “I’m damaged. Scarred.”

“Do you really think that could possibly stop me from loving you?” She asked, and he couldn’t help but chance a look up and into her eyes. She was gazing at him earnestly.

“I want to be able to love you back properly,” he admitted glumly, “you deserve it. You deserve everything, and I’m afraid that I can’t—”

“Dedue,” her gentle voice beckoned him back to where they were standing, just the two of them in the dark, one of her hands held in his own, and the other resting on his cheek. She had to stretch to reach, as he towered over her. It would be so easy to kiss her right now, he realized. He wanted to kiss her. After a moment, she said, almost self-consciously, “I know things are different for you. You’ve been through quite a lot, and I understand if your feelings towards me have changed. I just…mine haven’t. I still love you.”

That was it. Dedue could feel his hardened resolve crumbling and he fell into her, her hand remained on his cheek guiding his face towards hers. He continued to caress her right hand in his left, and his right hand found the curve of her waist as he felt her lips, soft and warm against his for the first time in five years. For a few minutes, they stood and kissed breathlessly, desperately, like it could possibly be their last. Her hand slipped from his cheek to the base of his neck, her thumb lightly tracing the skin there.

It felt like a different lifetime, like a different Dedue was standing in the greenhouse with a different Mercedes, and there was no war happening and his entire face and body weren’t marred with reminders of the brutal torture he’d been subject to in those few weeks that would haunt his nightmares for the rest of his life. 

He winced, and Mercedes stopped kissing him. They stood close together, hands still intertwined, her extra hand resting in the crook of his neck while his rested in the small of her waist. “I still love you too,” he murmured, “but I’m…I’m different now. I’m always afraid, I can’t sleep, I—” She stepped closer, pulling her hand out of his so that she could wrap both arms around him in a warm Mercedes hug.

“You don’t have to be who you were,” she said sweetly, “I’m different now, too.”

“You’ll always be Mercedes,” he said automatically. She offered him a small smile, one of his favorite expressions in the world on his favorite face in the world.

“And you’ll always be Dedue,” her voice was almost singing. And Dedue could feel his nightmare fading away, as he realized definitively that he was no longer alone. He was back where he belonged.


End file.
